Freak Scene #62: Sour City Tapes Rides Cassette Revival
Plus, Amherst's Scott Hsu goes bilingual on his latest single.
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, we hear from Cameron Haas about his cassette-only label Sour City Tapes, and Amherst musician Scott Hsu’s new single is the first time he has sung in English and Mandarin.
The cassette-tape music format had long since become a relic by the time Cameron Haas launched Sour City Tapes from his bedroom in Granby (the Massachusetts one).
Yet when Haas created the cassette-only label in 2019 to promote the music of a friend’s band, he joined an ongoing resurgence of interest in tapes. Music fans of a certain vintage will recall hauling around their Walkman portable cassette players, or dubbing albums (90-minute blanks could hold a full LP per side), or getting a tape stuck in the cassette player of your (parents’) car — to say nothing of the sacred practice of making mixtapes for your friends or romantic interests. Sure, the sound quality could be iffy, but, you know, trade-offs.
“I’ve always thought that cassettes are the coolest physical form of media,” Haas, 24, says on a Discord call. “There’s so much you can do to customize what you're doing with them. And I think it’s perfect, because it’s this little pocket-sized thing. You don’t got to be carrying around a 12-inch record.”
Haas started Sour City to release music by Never Forget Pluto, his friend Ethan Kennedy’s band at the time. Kennedy now plays in the Western Mass. groups Radical Joy and Map of the Stars, which have both released tapes on Sour City. The label is about as DIY as it gets: though Haas uses a company in Canada for professional-grade dubbing, he usually designs artwork for the J-card inserts, lists the cassettes on the Sour City website, packages them for mailing and takes them to the post office.
Sour City began branching out in 2022 with Apprehension by Windham, Conn., band Grand1sle, on a Fanta-orange transparent cassette. Releases by Radical Joy, Heart Shaped Lakes, Oolong and more followed on different colored cassettes, generally in small batches of 25 to 50, often in colorful combinations. Half go to the band to sell at shows, and Haas lists the other half online. Though Sour City releases often sell out, the label remains a passion project for Haas, who doesn’t always break even.
“I definitely have to put my own money in sometimes,” Haas says. “Not nearly as much as I used to, which is great. The first three or four releases, I want to say, were entirely funded by me. But that really hasn't been much of a problem recently, so that’s cool.”
In many ways, Sour City Tapes remains a promotional thing. It’s a way for Haas to be involved with the scene, and to collaborate with bands he likes to bring their music to a wider audience. Most of the groups are from Western Mass. and Connecticut, though Sour City’s two most recent releases are by the Denver band Skiimo (yes, that’s a portmanteau of “ski” and “emo”).
“I mainly just try to work with people who I think are cool,” says Haas, who also occasionally books live shows in Amherst, Holyoke and, once, at Plan B Burger Bar in Springfield. “Everyone who’s on the label is my homie, which I think is sick. I’ve got a lot of friends to work with, and that makes doing releases and all that stuff really easy.”
Though Haas plans to stay immersed in local music, Sour City Tapes “definitely has a shelf life.”
“It won’t be around forever,” Haas says. “But I’m going to keep it going for as long as it is feasible.”
Scott Hsu Connects With His Heritage on New Single
Although the early months of the pandemic were unremittingly horrible for most of us, a few silver linings emerged. For Amherst singer and songwriter Scott Hsu, it was the realization that he would rather be making music.
Not that he hadn’t been doing that already, but music was a hobby, something he did on the side during the 15 years he was teaching math at high schools in South Hadley, New Delhi, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Memphis, and Windsor, Conn. During the initial COVID lockdown in the spring of 2020, Hsu spent a lot of time livestreaming and performing music on Twitch.
“I grew a fanbase and artist network in the Twitch music community, which gave me the courage to make my side hustle my main hustle,” Hsu says by email.
Since going full-time as a musician, he’s been working on game music and also putting out alt-pop music at a steady clip: he released seven projects 2024 alone. Hsu’s latest is the single “陪你 (I Just Wanna Be With You),” a vibrant, hooky pop jam that includes lyrics in English and Mandarin — a first for the Taiwanese-American musician.
“Even though I grew up speaking Mandarin with family, I’ve been disconnected from my heritage for most of my life, especially in the creative realm. Most of my music has been in English,” Hsu says.
That began to change last year when Hsu got involved with the Jade Music Fest in Vancouver, where he encountered other musicians from what he calls the Asian diaspora. Inspired in part by “Like U,” a song by the Toronto jazz singer Jacq The, Hsu began incorporating Mandarin into his music. He switches between languages on “陪你 (I Just Wanna Be With You)” so smoothly that it’s easy to miss the transitions unless you’re listening closely.
“It's rare to see the English and Mandarin go back and forth seamlessly in music,” Hsu says. “That seamless transitioning back and forth matches the way I grew up talking in Mandarin with my family and other second-generation Mandarin speakers. Sometimes we’d substitute words because we wouldn't know what they were in one language, but other times we’d substitute because the words were better at expressing meaning in one language than the other.”
Hsu is working on more bilingual songs for a full-length album he hopes to have ready by the end of the year. In the meantime, he’s preparing to perform Jade Music Fest Asia in Taipei, Taiwan, later this month, and to connect more deeply with the music scene in Western Mass.
Upcoming Concerts
Tree House Brewing lately is as much concert venue as craft brewery, with a ton of upcoming shows that now include Peter Rowan with Sam Grisman Project, playing music from Old & In the Way June 16 at the brewery in Charlton (tickets), the Fruit Bats Aug. 11 in Charlton (tickets) and country singer Kip Moore in South Deerfield Sept. 18 (tickets).
The Iron Horse in Northampton hosts the Pride weekend kickoff Uplifting Queer Voices May 1, with Raavi, Grumpy and Eph See (tickets). Other upcoming shows include Bywater Call May 20 (tickets), Western Mass. stalwarts Dan Zukergood, Ginny Elkin and Johnny Joelson June 1 (tickets), Jeffrey Gaines June 8 (tickets), Junior Brown June 12 (tickets), Mtali Banda Aug. 1 (tickets), the Suitcase Junket Sept. 5 (tickets), Darrell Scott Oct. 2 (tickets) and Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters Nov. 29 (tickets).
In Amherst, the Drake hosts Canyon Lights and Troy Mercy May 31 (tickets), Mike Love (the Hawaiian Rasta, not the mawkish Beach Boy) June 6 (tickets), veteran Brazilian psych-rockers Os Mutantes July 16 (tickets) and Marc Ribot Sept. 27 (tickets).
Daily Operation in Easthampton presents Ghanian highlife singer Gyedu Blay Ambolley July 2 (tickets) and New York rapper billy woods Sept. 16 (tickets).
The Space Ballroom in Hamden, Conn., features Mark Mulcahy June 19 (tickets), Sun Kil Moon June 20 (tickets), Murphy’s Law June 22 (tickets) Tripping Daisy performing I Am an Elastic Firecracker July 14 (tickets), the Fruit Bats Aug. 14 (tickets), Brooks Nielsen of the Growlers Sept. 16 (tickets) and Billy Raffoul Oct. 17 (tickets).
Junior Brown also plays June 11 at Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk (tickets), while the Moody Blues’ John Lodge plays the Hartford outpost July 27 (tickets).
That’s it for this week, but Freak Scene is always seeking submissions. You can send music for coverage consideration to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first.
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